After an uningratiating start, John Graham-Hall does more than cope with Aron’s punishing tessitura: more accurate and agile than Thomas Moser in Vienna for Reto Nickler’s production, he forms a vividly directed double act with Thomas Johannes Mayer, who pitches much of his Sprechstimme. The effect is not only gratifying, in that more of what Schoenberg actually wrote is audible, but it brings a warm humanity to their scenes as brothers who can’t help finishing each other’s sentences even while talking at cross purposes.

The performance boasts a musically scrupulous pair of singers as the brothers. Thomas Johannes Mayer is an ideal Moses, bringing expressivity and deep musical logic to the prophet’s sprechstimme utterances. Aron’s high vocal lines sometimes require John Graham-Hall to shift into falsetto; at those moments the admirable force he generates in full voice dissipates, but he remains true to note values.